[ekianjo]

> Before that? Before the tail end of 19th century, we knew fuck all about anything. Medicine, in particular, graduated from voodoo and aforementioned "ground up unicorn toe" into a proper science and profession, also about 100 years ago.

Nevermind the thousands of plants with verified therapeutical effects across the world for centuries.

But yeah, old societies were completely clueless and a bunch of idiots and surely we have learnt nothing from them.

[meheleventyone]

Yes we should absolutely go back to keeping our humors balanced, bleeding people, treating syphilis with mercury, dying of an infection from a minor injury and insane level of mother and infant mortality.

[dekhn]

You're setting up a false equivalence when you imply that our position is that older societies were completely clueless.

Nobody is saying that. What we're saying is that the application of science to medicine and nutrition had an absolutely enormous effect, and before that, we didn't really have explanations- just empirical observations- of the effect of medicines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation

[ben_w]

As late as 1899, taking out a living person's heart couldn't be anything besides a gruesome execution. There wasn't the understanding to allow it to be survivable, and even the anaesthesia at the time was not really good enough for anything like that.

Now? Though still rare, it's just another thing you can have transplanted if you need it.

[TeMPOraL]

> But yeah, old societies were completely clueless and a bunch of idiots and surely we have learnt nothing from them.

Yes, they were, in comparison. They had neither predictive theoretical models, nor the tools to confirm and refine them - hell, for most history, they didn't even understand they need those things in the first place. Please appreciate that the period starting in late 19th century brought all the pieces together - the theoretical foundations, the observations, communications, precision manufacturing, the philosophy of science - they all added up to exponential growth across all scientific disciplines, and all occupations.

That's not to say we didn't learn anything from them. They did accumulate knowledge. But the sum of all knowledge humanity accumulated since beginning of recorded history is just a rounding error compared to what humanity accumulated in the last 100 years. That's the exponential growth at work.